


A Dance

by AliasPseudonym



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Other, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 12:36:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13295025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliasPseudonym/pseuds/AliasPseudonym
Summary: A fragment of a very strange boy and a machine built for war fight for centuries in orbit high about earth.





	A Dance

The greatest war the Earth ever knew happened long after every human had died. It was fought over almost nothing — some flowers, a faint memory, the echoes of voices in the wind amidst ruined towers. Alien invaders wielding strange weapons of living metal clashed with the synthetic caretakers of what was once the human race. Or rather, most of Earth’s defence was mounted by a single once-human boy for the sake of his cherished memories — he divided himself into an army of invincible weapons and fought all across the surface of the empty planet, even pushing them back into space.

Far, far from the surface, in the outer reaches of Earth’s orbit, a single one of these strange beings is fighting, locked in combat with a single machine lifeform. Long ago they drifted off from one of the larger battles, each singlemindedly focused on the other, not noticing as the others fell away back toward the earth while they floated further, further out, till the planet was only a beautiful blue marble in the sky below.

At first they fought furiously, twisting and stabbing with fury, each adapting quickly to the others moves, changing their very bodies by the day to create new weapons, new defences, all to find the slightest edge. Later, their reserves of power ran dry and they moved more sluggishly, like a slow but lethal dance, drawing whatever power they could from the sunlight and manoeuvring to cast shade on the other, always watching for the perfect moment to strike.

And one day, after decades of ceaseless battle, the moment came. The machine lifeform miscalculated an angle by a fraction of a millimetre and its enemy’s blade glanced past its guard, aimed straight for it’s core, pierced its outer armour and —

stopped short, inches from a fatal blow. The strange being’s skeletal face grinned its eternal, ghoulish grin as it darted back. A moment later it struck again, and this time the machine’s guard was ready. The battle resumed as if nothing had happened.

Decades passed. Maybe a century. The machine learned, adapted, grew stronger. Enough to see tiny weak points in its foe’s tactics, to push for small advantages, over the course of years of careful planning it could create an opening and, at the perfect moment, it levelled its cannon and —

a glancing hit, removing a chunk of its enemy’s strange mask but causing no real damage. The machine’s weapon had swung out of alignment at the last instant. Not a miscalculation, this time.

The battle resumed, but this time something was different. The whole mood, it seemed, had shifted. The motions resembled mortal battle, but the combatants were no longer trying to hurt one another. No longer a fight, but a dance, slow and graceful with blades flashing and blasters missing by a hair’s breath.

“My name is Emil,” said Emil, after a year or so of silence. They could speak through short transmissions, even in space. It just hadn’t seemed necessary, until now. “At least, I think it’s Emil. I barely remember anything.”

Again, years passed in silence. Then the machine replied, “I don’t think I have a name. I remember everything, but there’s hardly anything to remember. I was created for this war, for this fight, and it’s all I’ve ever know.”

“Oh,” Emil said, and a month or so later, “I’m sorry. Were you mad at me? Are you mad at me? I mean…” he trailed off, and a week later finished, “…never mind.”

The machine looked very thoughtful for a few months, then it said, “At first I was very mad. I felt betrayed. I didn’t know why you would break the rules, why you would pity me after so long. But I had a long time to think about it, and during that time I realized: if you hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have this time to think about it. I wouldn’t still be fighting and thinking about you. I wouldn’t exist anymore, and when I thought about it, I decided I wanted to exist. So I decided to be grateful, even though I was created for this fight, which by all rights should have ended in that moment.”

“Oh,” said Emil. He turned and stared at the beautiful blue marble hanging in the sky below them, and the machine turned too. For the first time in centuries, the battle paused. “I guess at first I was only thinking about that. About my precious memories, about the things I left behind on that planet. I was thinking about how I had to win, to save them, to go back down there and protect whatever I could. But over time I realized that wasn’t really me that wanted that. That was the other Emil, the one who split us up in the first place. I barely remember the Earth at all. I thought, if I was fighting for memories, all my clear and immediate memories are of fighting with you and I thought it would be bad to throw that away for my past self’s wish. And at that last second, I thought about after I won, going back down to the Earth all on my own, and I was afraid. I didn’t want to do that. I don’t know if that was right or not.”

The dance resumed, and there was a very long pause after that. Decades, probably. It’s hard to tell. The machine said, “Does it matter if it was right or not?” and Emil replied, immediately, “I guess it doesn’t.”

Maybe a week later, the machine asked, shyly, “What is Earth like?”

Emil had to think about it, which took a few months. “I don’t really know,” he admits. “I remember flowers. And people who were kind to me, but they’re long passed. And it’s been so many years, it could be nothing like I remember, by now.”

“Oh,” the machine said. A year passed. “You said, you said you were scared to go back alone, right?” The machine’s memory was flawless, of course.

“Yeah,” said Emil. “Yeah I did.”

They floated there, dancing in space, far above the earth. The machine said, “Would you like me to come with you?”

“Yeah,” said Emil. “I think I would.”


End file.
